Is Ryan Giggs a goalscoring record breaker?

Plus: Coaches using computer games (2); Players who turned their backs on the beautiful game (3); and mascots named in honour of footballers. Send your questions and answers to the lovely people at
knowledge@guardian.co.uk

Ryan Giggs curls in a free-kick against Tottenham at the weekend. Photograph: Ian Kington/AFP/Getty Images

When Rosenborg legend Roar Strand scored against Odd earlier this season, he had managed to score in the top division in Norway 20 years in a row. Is this a record?" wondered Lars Tangstad last week.

This weekend Ryan Giggs equalled Strand's epic achievement. The Welshman's first league goal came in the Manchester derby back in May of the 1990-91 season and his free-kick against Spurs on Saturday evening means he has scored in 20 consecutive seasons in the top-flight. Paul Scholes, by way of comparison (and yet to score this season) has found the net in a mere 15 back-to-back seasons.

Of the one-club men, Giggs and Strand seem to be the pacesetters, but a fair few can better or match their achievements with multiple clubs. Paul Lovatt suggests Roberto Dinamite of Vasco da Gama who "scored 186 goals in 20 championships contended for for Vasco da Gama, from Rio de Janeiro, and one for Portuguesa, of São Paulo" between 1971 and 1990, according to this slightly awkwardly translated site.

And Paul Haynes is keen to dampen Giggs' and Strand's celebrations. "It is certainly not a record," he sternly begins. "Romário, for example, scored every season from 1985-2007 (23 overlapping seasons) and Pelé scored in every season 1957-1977 (21 seasons) while Puskás scored in the 22 seasons he played football (though he was banned from football for two years during this period)."

HE'S BRILLIANT ON FIFA (2)

According to this Times article from 2006, Football Manager has apparently been utilised by a few clubs. "We started getting phone calls from scouts," said Miles Jacobson, the managing director of Sports Interactive, the game's developers. "Someone Ray [Houghton, the former Ireland midfield player, an adviser on the game] worked with called us up and said, 'We've been called by a club in division one, they need a left back, we can't come up with any and we thought you might know about some kids.' He sent a fax with some details; 20 minutes later, having done a database search, I sent him a list of 30 players and three weeks later I saw in the paper that one of those had signed for the club. We did that!"

And according to Jacobson, Peter Taylor's sole England squad for the November 2000 friendly with Italy so flummoxed opposing coach Giovanni Trapattoni, that he needed extra unusual help. "There was Trapattoni on the coach looking at the England squad, going, 'I've never heard of any of these players,'" said Jacobson. "So Demetri Albertini gets out his laptop, boots up the game and starts going through the players to show Trapattoni what they were like."

PLAYERS TO TURN THEIR BACKS ON THE GAME (3)

Over the past couple of weeks we've been looking at the players who have had enough of the beautiful game before their time is truly up. Here are a few more we couldn't squeeze in:

Curtis Woodhouse Former Sheffield United, Birmingham and England Under-21 midfielder who preferred the squared circle to the centre circle, quit the game in the summer of 2006 to become a professional boxer and has had an on-off relationship with football ever since. Now a welterweight with a 10-1 record, Woodhouse left Mansfield Town this summer to concentrate on his career in the ring.

Tobias Rau A 27-year-old former Bayern Munich left-back who won seven caps for Germany and retired at the end of last season. Began his career at Wolfsburg before moving to Bayern Munich in 2003 and then on to Arminia Bielefeld in 2005. "Four years later the club did not want to renew his contract," writes Andreas Gläfke. "Instead of looking for a new team, Rau decided to finish his career because he did not want to 'start a new life' somewhere else, as he said in an interview. Now, he studies Sports and Chemistry. Later on, he wants to be a teacher."

Daniel da Cruz Carvalho "Dani was only 27 years old when he stopped his football career, because he was 'bored'," writes Cláudio Gameiro. "I couldn't find an interview to back me up on this but word on the street were that Dani came from an rich family and only played for fun and his major interests in life were far from just playing football. I don't know what he does now in life, besides appearing on magazine covers and TV reports about night parties and disco parties."

Reinhold Mathy "One of the greatest German talents," writes Rudy Janssen, "who decided that top-flight football (he played for Bayern Munich) was too stressful. He did not quit entirely and played for smaller clubs, most notably Bayer Uerdingen."

Recep Tayyip Erdogan Can Ozmen writes with the story of the current Turkish prime minister, who played semi-professionaly for Kasımpasa of Istanbul for a number of years before pursuing politics.

Next week: a civil engineer, a fashion designer and the man who took a dump in Mark Lawrenson's kitbag. In the meantime, keep them coming at knowledge@theguardian.com

KNOWLEDGE ARCHIVE

"Lofty the Lion, Bolton's mascot, is named after Nat Lofthouse. Are there any other team mascots that are named after former players?" inquired Rupert Ward in those innocent days of 2005.

As several of you have pointed out, several mascots do have more use than goading away fans and 'comically' messing up half-time penalty shoot-outs. Indeed, some of them commemorate iconic figures from a club's history.

"I can add Wycombe's very own 'Bodger' to the list," says Steve Tranter. "He's named after Tony Horseman, who is the club's all-time leading goalscorer, playing 749 times between 1961 and 1978, notching up 416 goals.

"However, today's over-sized happy-go-lucky mascot isn't quite an accurate depiction of the former striker - who didn't like training, retired three times due to falling out with managers and can be seen in some team photos with a packet of fags - although I'd love to see Bodger the mascot with a giant foam cigarette sticking out of his mouth."

Andreas Freitag notes that Borussia Moenchengladbach's 'Juenter' mascot ("the name 'Guenther' pronounced in the dialect of the lower-Rhine area") is a reference to Guenther Netzer, the star of the club's great 1970s team that won five league titles and two Uefa Cup titles.

But it isn't just players who achieve such recognition, as Leon Smith explains: "Cardiff City's mascot, Bartley Bluebird, is named after Bartley Wilson, the founder of Riverside FC, which went on to become Cardiff City." James Woodgate adds that "Luton's very own Happy Harry is named after the club's famous manager 'Happy' Harry Haslam".

Best of all, though, has to be the mascot of SV Hamburg, as Daniel Buse notes: "It's a dinosaur called 'Hermann', named after the team's former masseur Hermann Rieger."

For more sepia-tinged questions and answers take a trip through the Knowledge archive

Can you help?

"My team Pumas UNAM are the current league champions in Mexico, yet have started the defence of their title with six defeats in the first seven games," writes Chris Wood. "Is this the worst start for a team defending their league championship?"

"I noticed in this weekend's Observer that a Colombian player was sent to prison earlier this year after shooting a fan," writes Ed McMillan. "Other than the obvious Cantona kung-fu kick, are there many other example of players attacking supporters, particularly their own?"